Using Python to improve government - Pycon UK 2014

The Government Digital Service is helping to transform government, helping to provide user led, high quality digital services to make citizens lives easier. One of the projects is based in Birmingham, dealing with giving citizens redundancy pay if their employer goes insolvent. We took a team of .NET engineers with no experience of agile development, and built a project in Python, iteratively, following government security principles. In this session, you'll learn why we picked python, how we convinced management, and how we convinced the developers

Transcript

1. Michael Brunton-Spall! Technical Architect! Government Digital Service! @bruntonspall
2. Using python to improve government GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
3. Who am I? GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
4. Government Digital Service GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
5. A digital civil service GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
6. 1. Build a centre of excellence in digital GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
7. 2. Fix publishing GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
8. 3. Fix transactions GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
9. Identify 25 projects GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
10. Insolvency Service GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
11. Redundancy Payments GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
12. The size of the problem GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
13. GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
14. Forms? GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
15. I think the web might have a solution for this! GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
16. An underused, under- invested in team GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
17. Code freeze - 1 year and counting GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
18. .NET, no consistent test or build systems GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
19. How can we help? GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
20. User centered design GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
21. Nobody wants to claim redundancy GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
22. They just want to get paid GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
23. GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
24. Start afresh, new language, new ways of working GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
25. GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
26. But what language? GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
27. Considered: JVM, .NET, Ruby, Node.js, Python GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
28. Have to convince some very skeptical senior managers GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
29. Need a language that is GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
30. Easy to learn GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
31. Simple ecosystem GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
32. Lots of pre-existing packages GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
33. Good support for tests GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
34. Performant and production capable GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
35. Cross-OS support GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
36. "Batteries included" GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
37. Python was a clear winner GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
38. (we might have been biased to start with) GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
39. GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
40. The team learnt: GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
41. A new language GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
42. Agile development GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
43. Test driven design GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
44. DevOps - Puppet, Ansible GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
45. Linux Servers GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
46. Cloud computing GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
47. Continuous Integration GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
48. Deployment GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
49. All within a “secure” government context GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
50. all in 12 months GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
51. Not bad! GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
52. Next challenges GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
53. Repeat on other services GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
54. Move into the backend services GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
55. Be a good citizen, work for your government! GDS Michael Brunton-Spall
56. Michael Brunton-Spall! Technical Architect! Government Digital Service! @bruntonspall